Latest developments

• Military radar suggests plane turned back and flew some distance – source

• Hijack, sabotage, mechanical failure also being investigated

• Still no sign of missing plane, search in fourth day

• Search area extended into Malacca Strait

• 227 passengers and 12 crew presumed dead aboard lost flight

• 19-year-old Iranian holding a stolen passport aboard the plane

Malaysia’s military believes a jetliner missing for almost four days turned and flew hundreds of kilometres to the west after it last made contact with civilian air traffic control off the country’s east coast, a senior officer told Reuters on Tuesday.

In one of the most baffling mysteries in recent aviation history, a massive search operation for the Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777-200ER, now in its fourth day, has so far found no trace of the aircraft or the 239 passengers and crew.

“It changed course after Kota Bharu and took a lower altitude. It made it into the Malacca Strait,” the senior military officer, who has been briefed on investigations, told Reuters.

That would appear to rule out sudden catastrophic mechanical failure because it would mean the plane flew around 500 km at least after its last contact with air traffic control, although its transponder and other tracking systems were off.

A non-military source familiar with the investigations said the report was one of several theories and was being checked.

At the time it lost contact with civilian air traffic control, the plane was roughly midway between Malaysia’s east coast town of Kota Bharu and the southern tip of Vietnam, flying at 35,000 ft altitude.

The Strait of Malacca, one of the world’s busiest shipping channels, runs along Malaysia’s west coast.

Malaysia’s Berita Harian newspaper quoted air force chief Rodzali Daud as saying the plane was last detected at 2.40 a.m. by military radar near the island of Pulau Perak at the northern end of the Strait of Malacca. It was flying about 1,000 metres lower than its previous altitude, he was quoted as saying.

There was no word on what happened to the plane thereafter.

The effect of turning off the transponder is to make the aircraft inert to secondary radar, so civil controllers cannot identify it. Secondary radar interrogates the transponder and gets information about the plane’s identity, speed and height.

It would however still be visible to primary radar, which is used by militaries.

Police had earlier said they were investigating whether any passengers or crew on the plane had personal or psychological problems that might explain its disappearance, along with the possibility of a hijack, sabotage or mechanical failure.

The plane left Kuala Lumpur for Beijing early on Saturday morning, vanishing from civilian radar screens about an hour after take-off over the sea separating eastern Malaysia from the southern tip of Vietnam.

There was no distress signal or radio contact indicating a problem and, in the absence of any wreckage or flight data, police have been left trawling through passenger and crew lists for potential leads.

“Maybe somebody on the flight has bought a huge sum of insurance, who wants family to gain from it or somebody who has owed somebody so much money, you know, we are looking at all possibilities,” Malaysian police chief Khalid Abu Bakar told a news conference.

“We are looking very closely at the video footage taken at the KLIA (Kuala Lumpur International Airport), we are studying the behavioural pattern of all the passengers.”

So little has been found at sea that Vietnamese searchers have widened their efforts to land, said Lt. Gen. Vo Van Tuan, deputy chief of staff of the Vietnamese People’s Army.

Authorities on land have also been ordered to search for the plane, which could have crashed into mountains or uninhabited jungle, he said. Military units near the border with Laos and Cambodia had been instructed to search their regions also.

“So far we have found no signs … so we must widen our search,” he said.

“We will expand search to the east in the sea and to the west on land and ask for Cambodia help…we will go where our friends go and make sure we inform our citizens and fishermen to request their help in the search.”

The fact that at least two passengers on board had used stolen passports, confirmed by Interpol, has raised suspicions of foul play. But Southeast Asia is known as a hub for false documents that are also used by smugglers, illegal migrants and asylum seekers.

Police chief Khalid said one of the men had been identified as a 19-year-old Iranian, Pouria Nour Mohammad Mehrdad, who appeared to be an illegal immigrant.

“We believe he is not likely to be a member of any terrorist group, and we believe he was trying to migrate to Germany,” Khalid said of the teenager. His mother was waiting for him in Frankfurt and had been in contact with authorities, he said.

Asked if that meant he ruled out a hijack, Khalid said: “(We are giving) same weightage to all (possibilities) until we complete our investigations.”

He also said there was no truth to a statement by at least one other government official that five passengers had checked in for the flight but never boarded the airplane.

Both men entered Malaysia on Feb 28, at least one from Phuket, in Thailand, eight days before boarding the flight to Beijing, Malaysian immigration chief Aloyah Mamat told the news conference. Both held onward reservations to Western Europe.

Police in Thailand, where the passports were stolen and the tickets used by the two men were booked, said they did not think they were linked to the disappearance of the plane.

“We haven’t ruled it out, but the weight of evidence we’re getting swings against the idea that these men are or were involved in terrorism,” Supachai Puikaewcome, chief of police in the Thai resort city of Pattaya, told Reuters.

Interpol released an image of two Iranians who were travelling with stolen passports on a missing Malaysia Airlines jetliner.

The image showed the two Iranian men boarding a plane at the same time. Interpol secretary general Ronald K. Noble said Tuesday the two men travelled to Malaysia on their Iranian passports, then apparently switched to the stolen Austrian and Italian documents.

He identified the men as Pouri Nourmohammadi, 19, and Delavar Seyedmohammaderza, 29.

The massive search for the plane has drawn in navies, military aircraft, coastguard and civilian vessels from 10 nations.

The search was widened on Tuesday to cover a larger swathe of the shallow waters of the Gulf of Thailand and South China Sea around the last known position of the plane.

But searches were also being conducted on the western coast of Malaysia and northwest towards the much deeper Andaman Sea – based on a theory that the plane may have flown on for some time after deviating from its flight path.

Neither Malaysia’s Special Branch, the agency leading the investigation, nor spy agencies in the United States and Europe, have ruled out the possibility of a hijack or bombing.

But Malaysian authorities have indicated the evidence so far does not strongly back an attack as a cause for the aircraft’s disappearance, and that mechanical or pilot problems could have led to the apparent crash, U.S. government sources said.

“There is no evidence to suggest an act of terror,” said a European security source, who added that there was also “no explanation what’s happened to it or where it is”.

The United States extensively reviewed imagery taken by spy satellites for evidence of a mid-air explosion, but saw none, a U.S. government source said.

Vietnam said it was allowing ships and planes from Malaysia, Singapore, China and the United States to enter its waters to search for the plane.

Malaysia Airlines, meanwhile, said it is investigating an Australian television report that the co-pilot on the missing plane had invited two women into the cockpit during a flight two years ago.

Jonti Roos described the encounter on Australia’s “A Current Affair.” The airline said it wouldn’t comment until its investigation is complete.

Roos said she and her friend were allowed to stay in the cockpit during the entire one-hour flight on Dec. 14, 2011, from Phuket, Thailand, to Kuala Lumpur. She said the arrangement did not seem unusual to the plane’s crew.

“Throughout the entire flight, they were talking to us and they were actually smoking throughout the flight,” Roos said.

Roos didn’t immediately reply to a message sent to her via Facebook.

About two-thirds of the 227 passengers and 12 crew now presumed to have died aboard the plane were Chinese. Other nationalities included 38 Malaysians, seven Indonesians, six Australians, five Indians, four French and three Americans.

China has deployed 10 satellites using high-resolution earth imaging capabilities, visible light imaging and other technologies to “support and assist in the search and rescue operations”, the People’s Liberation Army Daily said on Tuesday.

The Boeing 777 has one of the best safety records of any commercial aircraft in service. Its only previous fatal crash came on July 6 last year when Asiana Airlines Flight 214 struck a seawall on landing in San Francisco, killing three people.

U.S. planemaker Boeing has declined to comment beyond a brief statement saying it was monitoring the situation.

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